Meditations on Meditation
Mary Taylor
Excerpt from a Studio Talk given by Richard at the Yoga Workshop in 2007
One of the things I like about meditation practice, is that you’re not really sure what you’re supposed to be doing, or whether you’re even doing it or not. Eventually, you may realize that whatever arises, in terms of self-torture, is totally dependent on a certain frame of reference. It’s like it’s a game that the mind has created: a language game, in which you’ve decided that meditation is supposed to be bright. Then as you sit there, other things arise besides brightness, and so you decide that your meditation is no good based on just the axioms of that game—that meditation equals brightness. And then you think, “Well, I’m not going to play that game anymore.” Then a minute later you decide, “Oh, meditation is actually darkness!” Then what arises isn’t darkness, and you’ve failed again. Every trip that the mind makes, every vṛtti, is a little story, and is totally dependent on context.
It turns out that the whole idea in meditation practice is to keep seeing through context. It’s letting go of it as it is, and if you don’t let go, then meditation becomes just noticing that you’re not doing that. Which is the same thing as letting go of the context. So, it’s usually the moment you discover, some time into the practice, that you haven’t really been paying any attention at all to your breath during the last five minutes, and that your mind has wandered into vṛtti, or story-making, it’s right then that the intelligence is all of a sudden awake and you’re meditating.
But probably you don’t recognize that because another story takes over almost instantaneously. If not another more pressing story, the story that you’d wandered into vṛtti-land and you’re such a good meditator now because you noticed that. At first, mindfulness meditation is incredibly humiliating, which is why I don’t think it’s ever going to become a huge fad. Well, maybe it will. It’s particularly embarrassing in front of your false self, your theoretical self. But it’s so sweet after. You truly become compassionate.
Chanting is a practice that can help with meditation, with training the mind to focus on a chosen field, like sound, vibration or the breath. It’s good to start with a simple chant. Like chanting a seed mantra, oṁ for example. Or a short mantra like the word Śri.
Of course, many things that help us in meditation are going on when we’re chanting. First off, it’s very difficult to chant without exhaling. Try it! When we audibly chant, we’re making a sound that usually requires exhaling and so we’re getting grounded through the apāna. And the sensory feelings associated with chanting are powerful too—the vibratory quality of singing or chanting that automatically happens can be captivating to the mind. Keeping us focused.
Plus, there’s the meaning of the mantra. Ideally, the mantra is just pure sound itself, and the meaning of the mantra is self-reflecting. For instance, I might say, “The meaning of the mantra Śri is “the goddess” and a deeper meaning is that “she is everything, she is pure joy, she is pure consciousness.” In this manner the meaning is part of the process of training the mind when you are chanting mantra. However, when you’re chanting something in a repetitive way, as you do when chanting mantra, you’re not thinking of the meaning all the time. Occasionally you think of what the words actually means within a language system, but the meaning is such that it takes you right back to paying attention to the actual, immediate experience of the sound.
“The meaning becomes like a philosophical machine that takes you back and erases the doubt that arises within an active mind about why you’re chanting in the first place.”
This is the beauty of a seed mantra, like “oṁ.” What does oṁ mean? Well, it doesn’t linguistically mean anything. Yet the Upaniṣads will explain that oṁ means “everything,” or it means Brahman, or the clear light. But when you’re just chanting oṁ and leaning into the embodied experience of that process, things become remarkably clear. It really opens up the ākāśa. And then occasionally you remember the fact that the sound does have reference within a linguistic structure, it signifies “everything,” so your mind has something to focus on and the meaning isn’t a distraction from the practice. Instead, it brings you back into the immediate experience. The meaning becomes like a philosophical machine that takes you back and erases the doubt that arises within an active mind about why you’re chanting in the first place. With the meaning in the forefront, the mind is then satisfied because it believes, “Oh, this is important, it means everything!”
So, occasionally dropping into the meaning of a mantra kind of tricks you into continuing to chant and it coaxes you into having a direct experience of just sound as wonderment. If you look closely when sound manifests, you have no idea what it is. It’s just like anything: any kind of direct perception you have is like, there it is! How did it get there? I don’t know.
A good mantra takes you right back to that which is right before your eyes, pratiākṣa. And in this case, it’s just raw sound that is exquisitely beautiful. Although, be careful! If you imagine it as exquisitely beautiful you might have a preconception of “exquisite beauty” in the back of your mind and this will ruin the experience for you because the direct experience never matches our ideas or preconceptions about things. And if that happens the raw sound turns out not to be heard and the experience isn’t beautiful after all. We learn that in meditation early on, if we’re paying attention. But not too much attention—not holding our attention prisoner by our concepts. When you have a strict definition of meditation, things never line up with the limited definition you have in your mind. “Meditation looks like this. Beauty looks like this.”
We’re always comparing things to other things, and missing out on them in and of themselves. We miss out on so much.
This is exactly what meditation practice reveals to us, and why it can be humiliating. We think we know it all and then we realize we’re constantly missing out on so much. Sitting, chanting, practicing āsana, you name it. Things are going along just great and then a vṛtti pops up; a preconception, an emotion, a pain or a storyline arises and we’re off and running. Missing out.
The vṛtti itself is sacred because it is that which is right in front of the eye and for that very reason, it is sacred. But the mind doesn’t register that what’s right there before us is sacred because sacred is so special. How could this ordinary thing right here be sacred? So the mind projects, imagines of all this 3-D construction and depth—“Oh, there must be something behind this. So please, citta vṛtti, get out of my way, I’m trying to meditate on God, but you keep arising!”
You’re sitting there with God literally right in your face and you don’t see it because your petty thoughts and sensations keep bubbling up. This is missing out and it’s part of the practice too if we eventually see it!
